ModNation Racers review: hardcore, open-ended, beautiful

ModNation Racers is much harder than you'd expect, and you'll have to give the …

Has a single game dominated a genre as easily, and for as long, as Mario Kart? It has been King Mario and a bunch of almost laughable pretenders to the throne for the longest time. Now Sony is stepping into the battle with ModNation Racers, and the good news is the company brought its A-game: this is a new standard for what can be done in kart racing.

ModNation Racers may look like a whimsical children's title, but the actual gameplay is all hardcore. It's easy to jump in and start playing, but difficult to win. Let's take a look.

Pay attention to the tutorials

This isn't a casual game; you'll be using many buttons to do many things... and that includes both analog sticks and the D-pad. The title does a great job of easing you into all the tricks and tactics you'll be using throughout the game, so play a few hours of the single-player career mode first to get comfortable with everything you're asked to do. The downside to this complexity is that it will be harder to get your significant other or nongaming friends to play with you; those with a few hours of practice will have quite the advantage.

Here's how it works: by drifting, drafting, jumping, and attacking the other racers, you'll gain points used to give yourself a boost, sideswipe your opponents, or activate a shield that protects you against attacks. When you run over a pick-up and gain a weapon, you can use it then or power it up by running over multiple pick-ups. The weapons level up: at first it gives you a small boost, and when it hits level three you shoot ahead, fire under your tires, and teleport... just like in Back to the Future. It's great fun to watch simple attacks turn into acts of god by level three.

All these things force you to constantly make decisions while racing. Do you use your power to boost and gain a few positions, or do you save it for a shield in case you're attacked on the last lap? Should you use your single missile now, or upgrade it into a swarm? The longer you hold onto your abilities the better the chance you'll lose them, but the trade-off is power. Using items, side-swipes, boosts, and shields wisely goes a long way towards ensuring a win, but your opponents are also managing their own tools of mayhem.

The AI drivers, in fact, are ruthless. They are out to destroy you, and they'll capitalize on your every mistake. Even on the first few races, you will have to earn your victories.

The tracks are their own characters

A kart racing game is only as good as its tracks, and the tracks here are a delight. You'll enjoy huge jumps, attractive scenery, multiple paths, boost pads; there are all sorts of surprises to be found. You're also given ample reason to race each track multiple times, as you're given a list of things to do in order to unlock the maximum number of items. Simply placing in the race will allow you to move forward, but you may have to find three shortcuts as a secondary objective, or use a certain attack a number of times. In some cases you'll need to use the environment to your advantage. Each track has three tiers of objectives, and while you'll be able to get all three in one pass if you're good, expect to make multiple attempts on many of them.

Each track is also filled with tokens to collect. Some of these are easy to find, while some are cleverly hidden. The tracks don't give up all their secrets easily, and the depth given here is welcome; players will be trading their favorite paths, tactics, and best times as they learn the ins and outs of the game.

In the career mode you're also introduced to the track editor, which gives you a taste of how to create your own tracks to share. The tools are simple, but that's not a bad thing; dedicated gamers will be able to tweak and adjust their tracks as much as they'd like. Just because the game gives you plenty of help at first doesn't mean the content creation tools don't have hidden depths for the hardcore designers. Once the game is released and players start digging in, you should expect to see some crazy things online.

What's up with the loading?

The game deserves all the praise it's getting, but the loading times throughout the game are hard to tolerate. Take a look at how long it takes to actually get to a race after putting the disc in. Keep in mind, this video was taken after the game was installed on the hard drive. It's just unacceptable.

There is also a hub area you race around to get to the different aspects of the game, and for some reason the frame rate in that area is atrocious. You'll see stutters and pauses, and that's a shame. You should want to hang out in the hub, and displays showing new content and popular mods and karts give you a reason to do so. With such poor performance however, you'll want to get to a race or start editing some content as soon as possible. At least the frame rate in the actual game is solid, and that's the important thing. The graphics are clean and attractive, and it feels great to finally play a solid kart racing game in high definition.

The frustration comes from the fact there doesn't seem to be anything that requires such frequent and annoying load times. Can the long waits be patched out? We hope so. It's also important to point out that we were playing a prerelease copy of the game on our test unit, and there could very well be an update before the retail code is released.

It's also available on the PSP

The game will also be available on the PSP. While that version of the game doesn't have the graphical prowess of its big brother, the career mode is brought over and you'll be able to design tracks on that system as well. You won't be able to share tracks between the two versions, though.

So which version is better? The PSP version has much better loading times, but the PS3 version has button controls due to the dual analog sticks. It's easier to make tracks on the PS3 as well. The real answer is that no matter what system you use to play the game, you're going to have a good time.

This is a game that looks like it's for children while delivering a very adult difficulty. Some people are still going to prefer the more casual offerings from Nintendo, but this is a wonderful kart game that blows past offerings away. It's also something that will have a very long life, both on- and offline. It's not to be missed.

49 Reader Comments

Am I right in guessing that those were supposed to be "better controls" instead?

Anyway, thanks for the review. It sounds fun - although I won't buy it right away. If they manage to fix the loading times and bring the price down to $30 I'm in - but I just don't feel like spending $60 on a kart racing game no matter how cool it might be.

Still disappointed with the game's load times. No buy, well at least until they fix it, plus $60.00 is way too high of a price for a kart racing game imo. When it gets down to $20 I'll might remotely consider buying it.

Looks great. There aren't a lot of games that make me want a PS3, but this in one of them. Between this, LITTLE BIG PLANET and GOD OF WAR III you have a pretty awesome library. Bolt on what I hope will be awesome THE LAST GUARDIAN and LBP 2, and it looks like trouble for my wallet. Bring BC back, Sony! I'll meet you in the middle!

Can you shoot this video with a retail copy on consumer hardware when the game is released? There is no way to tell if this is what the consumer experience will be on launch day. That's not to say there will be any difference, but playing a prerelease copy on test units before street date is not representative of the consumer experience -- I know there's no other way to do a review, just sayin..

Sorry those going "$60 is too much, give it to me for $30..then I 'may'consider"?? Give me a break. How much do you want? How much effort do you think it takes to create an engine like this? Incredible.

I bet you have no trouble ponying up for MW2 which brings so much to the table?

Horses for courses I guess... I just see much more value and point in supporting games like this and LBP which are just so incredibly awesome especially for consoles.

@ Jeblucas

Good luck holding out man.. though why you dont just get the ps3 for the games you want, and keep your ps2 with all the games your dying to play on a ps3 (??), and just play it on that, truly beats me.

Judging by the response I've seen thus far, United Front Games have lost sales and likely a good 10% of their metacritic rating, and for a AAA title like this it just seems peculiar that they're shipping it with such a glaring Achilles heel. Granted, I'm no dev so I don't know what goes into tweaking load times down to acceptable ranges, but for a kart racing game I have a hard time accepting that this is something that a month or so's delay could not have ironed out (at least partially).

If the speculation of a post-release patch turns out to be true, now would be a GREAT time for UFG to say something about it...

Can you shoot this video with a retail copy on consumer hardware when the game is released? There is no way to tell if this is what the consumer experience will be on launch day. That's not to say there will be any difference, but playing a prerelease copy on test units before street date is not representative of the consumer experience -- I know there's no other way to do a review, just sayin..

On paper that's true, but in reality most of the time the discs we receive are final retail code, which means this IS how the retail game will run, barring a patch. When a company sends us unfinished code with issues that will be fixed by launch, it is always noted in the documentation; why NOT give reviewers a heads up if a major issue will be fixed before launch?

Sorry those going "$60 is too much, give it to me for $30..then I 'may'consider"?? Give me a break. How much do you want? How much effort do you think it takes to create an engine like this? Incredible.

I bet you have no trouble ponying up for MW2 which brings so much to the table?

Horses for courses I guess... I just see much more value and point in supporting games like this and LBP which are just so incredibly awesome especially for consoles.

@ Jeblucas

Good luck holding out man.. though why you dont just get the ps3 for the games you want, and keep your ps2 with all the games your dying to play on a ps3 (??), and just play it on that, truly beats me.

I actually hate Modern Warfare. $60.00 is just too much for a kart racing game that will be fun for like a couple of days. I don't play video games that much anyway.

Can you shoot this video with a retail copy on consumer hardware when the game is released? There is no way to tell if this is what the consumer experience will be on launch day. That's not to say there will be any difference, but playing a prerelease copy on test units before street date is not representative of the consumer experience -- I know there's no other way to do a review, just sayin..

Prerelease copy this close to release date is probably final cut, before it's sent to be produced but code is frozen (speaking from experience programming commercial software but not games).

What we should ask about is whether future patches will fix the loading issue.

Sorry those going "$60 is too much, give it to me for $30..then I 'may'consider"?? Give me a break. How much do you want? How much effort do you think it takes to create an engine like this? Incredible.

I bet you have no trouble ponying up for MW2 which brings so much to the table?

Horses for courses I guess... I just see much more value and point in supporting games like this and LBP which are just so incredibly awesome especially for consoles.

@ Jeblucas

Good luck holding out man.. though why you dont just get the ps3 for the games you want, and keep your ps2 with all the games your dying to play on a ps3 (??), and just play it on that, truly beats me.

I actually hate Modern Warfare. $60.00 is just too much for a kart racing game that will be fun for like a couple of days. I don't play video games that much anyway.

One of biggest feature in this game is user generated content much like LBP. So it would probably have fairly long life.

Ouch, it comes out the same day as Blur. Bad timing. It's probably going to get completely overlooked. This should've come out much earlier or several months out. Nice to see some competition in the car-battle arena though.

User created content is no excuse to not have $60 worth of content made by the developer. If their content isnt compelling enough to want to shell out the dough, thats the consumers right. I am tending to hate these games with user content tools.

User created content is no excuse to not have $60 worth of content made by the developer. If their content isnt compelling enough to want to shell out the dough, thats the consumers right. I am tending to hate these games with user content tools.

Some people love them, some people hate them. One of my friend is still going on about how great LBP is but I thought it was horrible. I'm still playing Fallout 3 based purely on mods.

EDIT : Also as an addition, making the user content tools in itself is also work; from design to inception.

I can't get a PS3 because my wife will kill me with heat vision. I would need to turn in the Wii or the XBox 360 or the iPad or the PS2 that's all boxed up (waiting for BC! Have a big stack o' games just waiting, Sony! Hear me!)

If she spotted a new controller near the couch it would be my undoing.

We need to move, and get a dedicated Man Cave®. That will solve all these problems, right?

Back on topic: They have spewed all that dough into motion control--they have to have thought of this, yes? Patchable?

This games reminds me of an old PC game called Lego Racers that I bought for my son.Weapons were powered up as multiple items were collected... the rocket weapon is almost exactly the same principle.Building a car out of Legos was fun.

I'm pretty disappointed that there isn't a way to link the portable and console versions of tracks. I can understand what sorts of limitations would be in place, but still. Would have been nice if there was some sort of workaround.

Regardless, I am looking forward to its release - though it'll have to be the US version as Q3 for Japan is just unacceptable to me.

Can you shoot this video with a retail copy on consumer hardware when the game is released? There is no way to tell if this is what the consumer experience will be on launch day. That's not to say there will be any difference, but playing a prerelease copy on test units before street date is not representative of the consumer experience -- I know there's no other way to do a review, just sayin..

Prerelease copy this close to release date is probably final cut, before it's sent to be produced but code is frozen (speaking from experience programming commercial software but not games).

What we should ask about is whether future patches will fix the loading issue.

Sorry those going "$60 is too much, give it to me for $30..then I 'may'consider"?? Give me a break. How much do you want? How much effort do you think it takes to create an engine like this? Incredible.

It's quite simple, actually: I didn't say the game wasn't worth $60 or that anyone buying it for that price was stupid or getting ripped off - I just said it's not worth $60 for me.

I'm sure the designers put in enough work to justify the price tag, but I'm equally sure I won't get enough fun out of the game to justify paying that much for it. I didn't even buy the latest Mario Kart yet, even though I own a Wii - I'm just not that much into kart racing or cute cartoon graphics.

Others will buy MNR and love it. Maybe they have more money than me or they like kart racers much better - either way that's fine, too. Just don't blame me for having different tastes in gaming.

Quote:

I bet you have no trouble ponying up for MW2 which brings so much to the table?

Lost your bet.

That said, I'm a sucker for stories, so games like Bioshock, Mass Effect, Heavy Rain or Alan Wake are generally easier to sell to me than a racer. Even with those, however, there are very few games I buy for launch price. If it's not something I've been eagerly awaiting for months, I usually wait a bit until prices have come down. (Loved Uncharted, didn't buy Uncharted 2, yet.) I only bought my consoles a few months ago, so I have a huge back catalog to choose from until prices on the newer releases have come down.

Kind of surprising to see an ostensibly legitimate tech site seriously recommending a kart racing game. Whatever, it's your reputation.

Because kart racing games can't be good games?

I'm actually not a particular fan of the genre myself, and don't have a PS3 anyway. But this looks like it'll probably be fun for a while if one of my friends picks up a copy (other than the load times), and the suggestion that a tech site shouldn't recommend a kart racing game - for no apparent reason other than it being a kart racing game - is just silly.

I played the Beta. The loading times were as slow then too. However, the track editor was brilliant, and the games were fun. I'm certainly putting it on my wanted list. Definately hoping that a patch will soon be arrive to sort those loading times out.

You're right I did... you dont seem to like ponying up for anything... I easily spunk $200 on a nothing night out so for me $60(equivalent- live in UK) is insane value for games like this that just blow my mind. That said I can get your approach sometimes, no need to go jumping in if you got other things to do/play and it will just sit on the shelf.

Any chance that initial load time has anything to do with the PSN error? Timing out waiting to hit servers or something? Otherwise looks great, going to have to give this a shot, thanks for the review (and the load time followup article).

Ughh.. unskippable logo screens on top of the long loading times? Who is responsible for making a decision like that? I can sorta' accept an unskippable logo screen the first time the game loads, but after that it is just unbearable. It's even worse when they decide to make the logo a big long animation.

I think Borderlands had a fun variation on that. If you didn't start playing within a few minutes of the game loading it would start playing the long, unskippable intro movie. And then Assassin's Creed on the PC did the opposite. Quitting the game took forever.

Can you shoot this video with a retail copy on consumer hardware when the game is released? There is no way to tell if this is what the consumer experience will be on launch day. That's not to say there will be any difference, but playing a prerelease copy on test units before street date is not representative of the consumer experience -- I know there's no other way to do a review, just sayin..

Prerelease copy this close to release date is probably final cut, before it's sent to be produced but code is frozen (speaking from experience programming commercial software but not games).

What we should ask about is whether future patches will fix the loading issue.

Then why did you comment on this story?

Oh wait you're a troll.

How is that a troll?

Quote:

Any chance that initial load time has anything to do with the PSN error?

It's not an error, it's just saying it couldn't connect to the server. I had networking disabled on my debug kit.

While I would agree that launch->race loading times are relevant, focusing solely on that strikes me as a bit misleading. I can't really imagine sitting down, playing a single race, and then quitting. Rather, I'd likely spend an hour or three playing the game, so the only loading time I'd need to deal with would be the pre-race load. That took about a minute—which is still a long time, admittedly—and if you figure a race takes five(?) minutes, you're looking at 10 minutes out of every hour waiting for the next race to start. Maybe less, if you're doing a lot of races repeatedly as you say in the review?

As I say, a minute of loading before a race is still a good while, and if that could be patched down to closer to 30 seconds, that would improve things dramatically, but to simply say, "3:35 of pre-race loading" is a bit of a misrepresentation IMHO.

Other than that, nice review, though I too would've liked to have heard a bit more about the UGC side of things. If you're going to follow up on loading times post-release, I'd like to also hear more about UGC, both in terms of making it and in terms of finding it.

Still, if the game is a Buy despite the significant loading times and the glossed-over UGC, I'd say that bodes pretty well. This isn't the first review I've read that said the game finally dethrones Mario when it comes to pure racing, so couple that with the effectively unlimited number of tracks, and it sounds like a winner.

The powerup system, where powerups get bigger if you hold on to them, is an interesting twist on the Combar Racing genre. Now you have to think tactically - should I use the weapon now, or hold onto it for a bigger boom later? Very interesting.

The game looks fun. I’m really enjoying all the videos popping up on YouTube.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised by the Buy verdict. The previous MNR article related to this issue made me think that it was going to be a game killer, but it sounds like the goods much outweigh the bad—which is great when you consider how annoying the load times are.

Looking forward to this game. Will probably pick it up ahead of the lineup simply for the sake of having another party game.

Off topic: I wonder if Bird Skull has been reading OT long enough to have read the various Wii game reviews—and if so, why he/she is still reading.. Whatevs, it's his reputation..